What is the allure of owning Mainland vs Private?

[Exocet Kungler]

Morning everyone! Have a quick question I was thinking of last night.

Lately I have been debating on owning a home and oddly enough going Premium + for my business in game. However, I struggle to understand the desire to live on mainland. Sure, PP gives me 2048 tier credits, but they have to be on mainland of course. Is this why so many people navigate to mainland? Personally for me, I find mainland very laggy, and overall sluggish compared to private sims, even with a new beefy PC with 3080. I've also found that I can rent land cheaper if not the same as the typical tier costs per month on private sims vs mainland. Is there something I'm missing here that would drastically change my perception upon what I see at face value? To me, private sims seem like a better deal for a 4096 plot for just a house.

Thanks in advance!

[Cinos Field]

Being on mainland ensures that you won't get kicked off your land because the landlord has a bad day, won't have to limit your creative impulses to what the actual land owner allows, can have any amount of guests (a lot of rentals limit that - read the fine print!), and so on. You pay for freedom and safety, basically. As for lag, it all depends on the sim and what else is on it; that applies to private rentals too, rather than being just a mainland problem.

[Rowan Amore]

8 minutes ago, Exocet Kungler said:

Morning everyone! Have a quick question I was thinking of last night.

Lately I have been debating on owning a home and oddly enough going Premium + for my business in game. However, I struggle to understand the desire to live on mainland. Sure, PP gives me 2048 tier credits, but they have to be on mainland of course. Is this why so many people navigate to mainland? Personally for me, I find mainland very laggy, and overall sluggish compared to private sims, even with a new beefy PC with 3080. I've also found that I can rent land cheaper if not the same as the typical tier costs per month on private sims vs mainland. Is there something I'm missing here that would drastically change my perception upon what I see at face value? To me, private sims seem like a better deal for a 4096 plot for just a house.

Thanks in advance!

If you use your 2048 for mainland or a Linden home, you don't pay any other rent.  I'm sure that's the main reason people choose mainland/Belli.  

[Ceka Cianci]

Ya, I think it's that you cut out the middle person and deal directly with LL..

If you can find a nice beach lot, it can be well worth it.. Especially if there is protected water right off you beach.

[Exocet Kungler]

18 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

Being on mainland ensures that you won't get kicked off your land because the landlord has a bad day, won't have to limit your creative impulses to what the actual land owner allows, can have any amount of guests (a lot of rentals limit that - read the fine print!), and so on. You pay for freedom and safety, basically. As for lag, it all depends on the sim and what else is on it; that applies to private rentals too, rather than being just a mainland problem.

I can totally see this as being one of the main reasons to live there. I have been looking at fully furnished Maven homes, so pretty much a rez it, click, and its done. So even if a "Simmer" had a bad day, I could just relocate. I will say however, the number of guests being limited is something I certainly have not taken into account. Had no idea they even limit that. Sure, im not going to have club parties, but I would like the occasional get together, and would hate to be limited in Avi's able to be present. A 4096 plot home can have a hell of a party technically.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Exocet Kungler

[xDancingStarx]

Advantages of private estates:

- Lots of sim corners or edges available with ocean view

- If a neighbor builds an eyesore or out of whatever reason you can just move to another spot easily

- Usually less eyesores than on mainland

- Less trespassers than on mainland and more privacy

 

Advantages of mainland:

- Trespassers in people using public roads and water ways

- Your land and your buildings exposed to a broader audience, making you feel part of this world

- You can use use public roads and water

- Land has value due to scarcity which can make it almost feel like a collectible game

[Exocet Kungler]

15 minutes ago, xDancingStarx said:

Advantages of private estates:

- Lots of sim corners or edges available with ocean view

- If a neighbor builds an eyesore or out of whatever reason you can just move to another spot easily

- Usually less eyesores than on mainland

- Less trespassers than on mainland and more privacy

 

Advantages of mainland:

- Trespassers in people using public roads and water ways

- Your land and your buildings exposed to a broader audience, making you feel part of this world

- You can use use public roads and water

- Land has value due to scarcity which can make it almost feel like a collectible game

Excellent breakdown. With a Maven home I certainly don't want any eyesores. In all honesty I'd probably prefer a more affluent looking area to place it in. Not sure how many of those exist on Mainland however.

[Leora Greenwood]

14 minutes ago, xDancingStarx said:

Advantages of private estates:

- Lots of sim corners or edges available with ocean view

- If a neighbor builds an eyesore or out of whatever reason you can just move to another spot easily

- Usually less eyesores than on mainland

- Less trespassers than on mainland and more privacy

 

Advantages of mainland:

- Trespassers in people using public roads and water ways

- Your land and your buildings exposed to a broader audience, making you feel part of this world

- You can use use public roads and water

- Land has value due to scarcity which can make it almost feel like a collectible game

Yes to all of these points, plus many of the private estate owners know they need to provide a strong sense of community and lots of events to keep their renters happy so I am a big supporter of renting in addition to loving my Linden Home.  I find the bulk of mainland so ugly and depressing that I rarely even visit.

[Rowan Amore]

20 minutes ago, xDancingStarx said:

Land has value due to scarcity

Only SOME land is scarce and therefore priced extremely high.  Land near roads or water pretty much being the only 2 places, aside from the double prim regions, that are in high demand.  There is a HUGE percentage of abandoned land compared to owned.

57% of Mainland owned directly by Linden Accounts (Contiguous Mainland is 6806 regions including Linden Home regions)

20.7% to 21.4% of Mainland by area is abandoned parcels 

Edited July 12, 2022 by Rowan Amore

[Exocet Kungler]

Just now, Leora Greenwood said:

Yes to all of these points, plus many of the private estate owners know they need to provide a strong sense of community and lots of events to keep their renters happy so I am a big supporter of renting in addition to loving my Linden Home.  I find the bulk of mainland so ugly and depressing that I rarely even visit.

This 100%. I guess it just looks ugly, but admittedly I don't know where the hidden gems are hiding either.

[Cinos Field]

17 minutes ago, Exocet Kungler said:

I can totally see this as being one of the main reasons to live there. I have been looking at fully furnished Maven homes, so pretty much a rez it, click, and its done. So even if a "Simmer" had a bad day, I could just relocate. I will say however, the number of guests being limited is something I certainly have not taken into account. Had no idea they even limit that. Sure, im not going to have club parties, but I would like the occasional get together, and would hate to be limited in Avi's able to be present. A 4096 plot home can have a hell of a party technically.

The people count isn't automatically enforced in the places that do it, but sometimes they have staff keeping an eye on how many people you have on your parcel. You'll 100% want to read the covenant in detail; I remember one where a 1024 parcel was only allowed to have the host and two additional people on it. There's all kinds of stuff like that they don't mention in the brochures.

[LittleMe Jewell]

54 minutes ago, Exocet Kungler said:

Lately I have been debating on owning a home and oddly enough going Premium + for my business in game.

By 'for my business', if you mean that you'd like to have a Store, then you typically cannot do that in a traditional private region that is built for Residential - and you definitely cannot do it at a Linden Home location.  You might need to find 2 separate private region locations -- one for your home and one for your business.

What some are doing with the P+ 2048 is having themselves a 1024 Linden Home and then using Mainland for the other 1024 for their shop.  Creating the store in a skybox eliminates the customers seeing any of the eyesores on the ground.

Edited July 12, 2022 by LittleMe Jewell

[Exocet Kungler]

1 minute ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

By 'for my business', if you mean that you'd like to have a Store, then you typically cannot do that in a traditional private region that is built for Residential - and you definitely cannot do it at a Linden Home location.  You might need to find 2 separate private region locations -- one for your home and one for your business.

What some are doing with the P+ 2048 is having themselves a 1024 Linden Home and then using Mainland for the other 1024 for their shop.  Creating the store in a skybox eliminates the customers seeing any of the eyesores on the ground.

My apologies on somewhat blending them together, I already have my business on a seperate private sim that is already established through the Azure family monopoly. I was meaning to kind of put the PP comment in there as to perhaps, use its perks in some way that all of you friendly folks would advise as a better use scenario. I'm definitley keeping my home and business seperated, (Different Parcel) for advertising, and marketing purposes. 😃

[Lewis Luminos]

• I don't have to worry about a landlord pulling the plug on me (for the story, see below)
• I don't have to worry about missing my rent if I am absent for a while
• I don't have to stick to a theme, I can build whatever I happen to fancy at the time.
• I'm not limited in the number of guests or breedables I can have
• I can use my land for residential or commercal purposes as I choose.
• I have full parcel control and can add whoever I want to the land group whenever I want
• Should I wish to do so, I can sell the land (the amount I have would make quite a tidy sum if I sold it all, even for a modest rate)
• I can (and do) rent out part of my land to another resident.
• For the amount of land I have (about 1/6th of a region) owning is cheaper than renting.
• Half of my land is double-protected land between a Linden road and about a dozen regions of sailable lakes. The only way I could get something like that on rent would be in or near Blake Sea and that would be astronomically expensive.
• Isolated private islands are claustrophobic to me. I like being connected to a wider world by road and sea.

So the story - my first parcel in this region was mainland but rented. I loved it so much that I asked my landlady to sell it to me if she ever decided to quit the rental business. Well she did, in the end (after about 8 years), and sold the land to me for L$1 per sq m. Since then I've bought more, raising my original 3k sq m up to around 11k.  

[Exocet Kungler]

10 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

The people count isn't automatically enforced in the places that do it, but sometimes they have staff keeping an eye on how many people you have on your parcel. You'll 100% want to read the covenant in detail; I remember one where a 1024 parcel was only allowed to have the host and two additional people on it. There's all kinds of stuff like that they don't mention in the brochures.

Yeah that is really bad. That would be horrible. Wouldnt be renting with them at all!

[Exocet Kungler]

11 minutes ago, Lewis Luminos said:

• I don't have to worry about a landlord pulling the plug on me (for the story, see below)
• I don't have to worry about missing my rent if I am absent for a while
• I don't have to stick to a theme, I can build whatever I happen to fancy at the time.
• I'm not limited in the number of guests or breedables I can have
• I can use my land for residential or commercal purposes as I choose.
• I have full parcel control and can add whoever I want to the land group whenever I want
• Should I wish to do so, I can sell the land (the amount I have would make quite a tidy sum if I sold it all, even for a modest rate)
• I can (and do) rent out part of my land to another resident.
• For the amount of land I have (about 1/6th of a region) owning is cheaper than renting.
• Half of my land is double-protected land between a Linden road and about a dozen regions of sailable lakes. The only way I could get something like that on rent would be in or near Blake Sea and that would be astronomically expensive.
• Isolated private islands are claustrophobic to me. I like being connected to a wider world by road and sea.

So the story - my first parcel in this region was mainland but rented. I loved it so much that I asked my landlady to sell it to me if she ever decided to quit the rental business. Well she did, in the end (after about 8 years), and sold the land to me for L$1 per sq m. Since then I've bought more, raising my original 3k sq m up to around 11k.  

Love the idea!. And the thought process behind it. Which would be an optimal situation. But, 8 years is a long time. 😁. I'd hope to find good parcel or starter parcel of 4096 size before that timeframe elapsed hahah. 

[Rolig Loon]

I used to rent commercial space on the mainland, but I have never lived there. I've always either rented on  or -- since 2014 -- owned a private region.  I enjoy the low traffic and the fact that I know everyone on the region. (We have very low turnover, so most of us have known each other for a very long time.) It also matters to me that there is a consistency in architectural style across the region, so we don't have a carnival-like agglomeration of space ships, castles, yurts, and bungalows.  And no permanent structures in the sky below 1000m. (Those are also advantages of Bellisseria, so it is possible to enjoy them in non-private regions.)  The only real disadvantage I can see is that I have to teleport to get anywhere else, since there's no airspace or real ocean beyond the region.  That would be limiting if I or my tenants were into aircraft or sailing, but we aren't.   

[Da5id Weatherwax]

For me it' a matter of "my place, my rules" and the only other guys rules I need to worry about would be LLs if I happened to live somewhere other than Zindra, but since that's where I do live their rules are minimal, and only prohibit things I wouldnt put up with anyway

My ideal living situation would be my own region but I don't have a business that can support that much tier any more

[Cinos Field]

21 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

And no permanent structures in the sky below 1000m. (Those are also advantages of Bellisseria, so it is possible to enjoy them in non-private regions.)

And to illustrate how tastes and needs differ, this is a negative for me - as you go too high up, your attachments start vibrating, which I find absolutely infuriating even if it's barely noticeable. Ideally I want my skybox *below* 1000 meters since I adjust and modify stuff a lot, all the time.

[Lewis Luminos]

30 minutes ago, Exocet Kungler said:

Love the idea!. And the thought process behind it. Which would be an optimal situation. But, 8 years is a long time. 😁. I'd hope to find good parcel or starter parcel of 4096 size before that timeframe elapsed hahah. 

I've actually been in the same region now since January 2009, if you count both the rental period AND the period I've owned it. I still own the little parcel I started with at the end of the beach; thats where Madison (my SL partner) lives now.  Its a lovely location; very quiet, on the first continent (Sansara) with access to sailing and the road network right on my doorstep. I occasionally see the pod rides going past but the road itself is a dead end the next region south so passing traffic is almost nil.

4096 is about the smallest size at which I'd say owning mainland is cheaper than renting (at current prices). Rent is low at present, so is the upfront cost of purchasing mainland, but monthly tier remains the same.

Another situation in which owning is not optimal is if you're the sort to constantly move around, or if your financial situation is unstable and you may need to downsize at a moment's notice. Selling land is harder than buying it, especially if you want to sell at a profit.

[Exocet Kungler]

Everyones reply has been amazingly helpful thus far, and I appreciate everyone whom has weighed in on the topic. You all have me debating now far more than I ever was before 😋 haha. Let me ask you professionals this. I have a great list of private sims that offers all the nice things, water view, "affluent looking", privacy, basically ticking all the bells. Would any of you by chance have a particular Mainland location I might be able to check out and explore that might tick a few boxes? To be honest, I don't know a lot of nice mainland locations, mainly because, even since creation, I never really ventured there and that was over a decade ago.

Here is the home I'm going to drop on the land to give you all a little better idea of "Style". 

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/The-Berkeley-Furnished/21444235

 

Edited July 12, 2022 by Exocet Kungler

[kali Wylder]

I used to own land in Bay City where the prims are doubled. The only thing I didn't like about it was that we weren't allowed to terraform there.  I don't remember what I paid for it now (but it was about $45.00 US dollars) but I feel like it was well worth it since I lived there for about ten years and never had to pay tier.  I sold it when I retired and I got well over $120,000 lindens for it.  Now I live in Bellisseria and really I find it suits me just fine.   I doubt I will bother with mainland again.

[Claireschen Hesten]

I don't own mainland but i do rent and the biggest advantage i see for myself based on what i've witnessed, if the person/estate i rent from vanishes off the face of SL and stops paying tier, when the time comes and it gets taken in to Linden ownership, ban lines will go up at ground level and there will be about a week before the land is cleared so i have time to recover my belongings. on a private estate the region could vanish, i could lose access or have everything returned without any notice

[Rowan Amore]

I live in Horizons.  Adult, double prim and not attached to the regular mainland.  Overall, it's a great looking area.  It's kind of like LL's first attempt at a neighborhood.   Roads, sidewalks, homes available on each parcel but the difference being, you can choose to use the house or not.  It was SUPPOSED to be a futuristic region but to be honest, the homes are not very good so almost no one uses them.   It also allows businesses.  Sadly, you probably won't currently be able to find a 1024 parcel under 100,000L.   

[Exocet Kungler]

Ill check a few of these places out. Sounds like I have some more research to do before buying / renting. I appreciate every one of you responding and offering excellent advice. You've given me a ton of info to work with.

 

Thank you all my Second Life Avi's / Friends.